


Subtle Pains

by paperbridge



Category: 91 Days (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Are these characters ooc? yeah probably, Bittersweet, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, blind!Angelo Lagusa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 14:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperbridge/pseuds/paperbridge
Summary: do i hate myself? yes. is that why i spent my entire day on this one long fic? yes, but also because i love you guysso i hope you guys like angst





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [91dayskinkmeme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/91dayskinkmeme) collection. 



 

     The night happened so quickly after the day dragged on for years. Deltoro, the stoic giant that had presented himself as a threat, went down after getting impaled by three knives. Barbero followed Deltoro, his mind spilled onto the floor that flooded his head, even now.

 

     But they don’t matter, in the end. They never had, Angelo didn’t need them.

 

     Ganzo, after giving Nero the letter, followed after Avilio. Unlike Nero, the man knew where to go. He came in as soon as Avilio fired the first shot into Don Galassias. His heart sank. Ganzo looked to the balcony Strega and his men were, knowing his fate was ultimately sealed.

 

     Angelo shot. And shot. And shot. Don Galassias was a goner after the first blow, but he refused to stop. He didn’t matter, and Vincent didn’t, either.

 

     He turned his gaze towards Ganzo, looking much too weary to hold such a hateful gaze.

 

     Ganzo was terrified. He couldn’t afford to get on Strega’s bad side, or else there’d be nothing left for him. Nothing left of him.

 

     He pulled out his gun and threw Avilio to the side. “Look at what you’ve done, boy,” He spat, his hand shaking as he aimed at Vincent. Vincent Vanetti, the man who had allowed Testa’s blood to gush out from a flurry of bullet, was now on his knees, weak hands trembling to stop the bleeding. He coughed as he begged for Ganzo to get help. He hadn’t realized the gun until Ganzo shot.

 

     And it wasn’t until Ganzo shot that he realized that the echo in his ear was another shot. As Vincent fell limp onto Don Galassias, Ganzo struggled to turn and face Avilio. But Avilio hadn’t shot.

 

     Nero stood at the archway, clutching the wood panel tightly while smoke climbed out of the nostril of the gun. Ganzo fell limp onto the fine carpet, soaking it with his blood.

 

     The small area was now filled with Angelo and Nero. Nero stared at his uncle, relaying the scene he witnessed and trying to figure out _why._

 

     This is what he wanted. This is what this all was coming down to. This confrontation.

 

     Angelo took the first shot, his perfect aim suddenly flawed and nicking Nero’s cheek. Angered, Nero aims for Avilio.

 

     “Why have you done this?”

 

     Suddenly, Avilio is raw, his face contorting into something full of hatred and flames. He’s no longer the elusive smokescreen that Nero had always wished to see the other side of, his facade now dissipating.

  
  
     “You destroyed my life by killing Testa Lagusa,” He said, voice shaken and hoarse. “By killing my family to supposedly protect your own.” _But now, you have nothing._

 

     “Testa Lagusa,” The realization hit Nero so suddenly. He’s stricken with cold and heat from each level of hell he could think of, the utter betrayal raw from the history of ‘Avilio’s’ list of lies.

 

     What was the depth of Avilio’s betrayal, and how far did it run? His chest burned, and he could have sworn Avilio must have shot him then, but he still hadn’t pulled the trigger.  

 

 _“You killed Vanno,”_ Nero’s mouth was fire and smoke, bright and burning while his usually cool, blue eyes that resembled a summer’s day was now cold as the ice Angelo had ventured through as a child.

 

 _“You killed my family!”_ Angelo overwhelms the room in a quiet, chilling moment. The truth burns like Lawless Heaven, but it left Nero empty and bitter and burning.

 

     “This is all you get,” Avilio tried discarding himself from his words, going dull and emotionless, but he couldn’t. The gun shook in his hand, his finger unable to pull the trigger. “You’re going to die here, and it’ll be done.”

 

     “You’re not leaving this room if I don’t,” Nero warned, his words burning him, destroying him. There wasn’t a knife on Avilio, but that damn gun was on the Vanetti like the fucking Devil.

 

     Avilio smiled. It’s a sad sight- broken, unhappy, hateful, golden, dead eyes threatening to spill tears. “That’s how this ends, Nero.”

 

* * *

 

     This isn’t what he wanted. Angelo sits on the bed, clutching the sheets for the hundredth time, balling his hands into a fist and wanting to scream and scream and scream until he choked on his shouts. He doesn’t much care for the face he might be making.

 

     He doesn’t much care for the way his mouth is twisted into a grimace as he counts his blinking. _It’s dark._ He closes his eyes, lingers in the dark. He opens them up, wide. As wide as the Vanetti Playhouse, and as wide as the distance from Lawless to Chicago, and even wider, still, from Lawless to Chicago to his old apartment. _It’s dark._

 

     He grits his teeth, grinding and grinding until he’s sure his teeth will turn to dust. He runs his tongue over his teeth and curses when he doesn’t taste any dust or blood. _I’m dead,_ He tells himself. He wants a cigarette. _This is only hell._

 

     But it isn’t.

 

     He drags his hand against the surface of the sheets, his knuckles brushing against embroidered patterns on the blanket. He tries to make sense of what the color of the blanket is, despite Nero telling him it was cream.

 

     He remembers the blanket his mother made for Corteo on Christmas. He carefully grabs a fistful and carries the soft fabric to his nose, intaking its smell.

 

     It’s not Corteo’s. Corteo smells like cocoa and warmth, like coffee and gin and bootleg and, inevitably, tainted with smoke and cigarettes. _That’s_ what Corteo smells like. What he smelled like. That was _Corteo_. This blanket is much too perfect for his mother to have sewn it, and Angelo hates it.

 

     Angelo curses to himself, loudly in his mind, quietly with ticks and pushed out syllables. He curses and crumples however much of the blanket he can get before standing up and throwing it as far away from him as he can, and as hard as he can. He imagines hitting Nero with it, and in some strange act of God, Nero is strangled by it and dies.

 

     But Nero is in the kitchen, making pancakes. He can hear the flame snapping and flickering under the pan and the sizzle of the flour hitting the slick pan. Angelo gets pancakes, but he’s stuck with Nero Vanetti.

 

     Angelo runs his fingers through his hair, clinging to the ends of it before dragging them across his face. He scratches at his eyelids, hissing at the pain before falling back into bed.

 

     “Cigarette,” He calls, covering his eyes with his arm. It’s the same as opening his eyes, and it only infuriates him.

 

     “You can’t live off cigarettes.”

 

     He denies him his death, and can’t even settle for him to take his own slowly.

 

     “Fuck you.”

 

     Nero stops, and Angelo can tell from the clink of his spatula on the rim of the pan. The pause lasts like an intermission. Nero continues cooking, muttering that he’ll be done in a bit.

 

     Angelo hates him.

 

* * *

 

 

     Nero’s fingers rap against the dining table, glaring at Angelo from across the table. Baked beans. Angelo demanded pineapples to go along with it, but Nero gets a rotten taste in his mouth as he thinks of all the canned pineapples they consumed on their road trip.

 

     He hated to look back on those fond memories, those desirable times when he had thought a bond had struck. A time when Avilio would tease him in that special, one-of-a-kind way that gave Nero that one-of-a-kind feeling, despite being the butt of most of Avilio’s jokes.

 

     But those memories are muddied by Barbero’s death, and by his uncle’s death, and by Don Galassias’ death. They’re muddied by Vanno and his father’s deaths. He was lucky he hadn’t seen Vanno’s empty eyes, or he would have lost his mind. But he had seen his father’s and Frate, and he was sure his mind had already gone.

 

     And to think that the origin of all his problems had been so close to him. To think that he had opened himself up to the living embodiment of his faults, and to think that he had let him into his bed.

 

     Nero smolders and chews his beans, imagining a puff of smoke from a cigar would make him feel better. But cigars remind him of his father, and the last time he smoked the ashes melted into blood and God, he couldn’t have stopped crying at the taste.

 

     “You’re wasting food,” Angelo said, taking half a spoonful of beans into his mouth.

 

     Yes, those memories have been murdered. They were dead like Avilio ought to be, but he wasn’t. Nero wouldn’t kill him.

 

     As Avilio ate, Nero remembered that _Avilio_ was no one. _Angelo_ was who ate at their table, and depended on him. Avilio never needed anyone, and he could have killed Nero at any time.

 

     “You’re too keen for a blind man.”

 

     But he didn’t.

 

     Angelo chewed slowly, acting as though the food came down slow and taking too much would upset him. Or was it that he spent too much time eating because it was one of the few things he could do alone?

 

     Avilio had become so pathetic.

 

 _Angelo,_ Nero reminds himself.

 

     But Angelo is different. Angelo Lagusa was the young boy he would happen to spot by the window when his father visited Testa. Angelo was the boy who would smile, point to his father’s car and explain to his little brother what little knowledge he could offer.

 

     Angelo Lagusa was the one he couldn’t bear to shoot. The unintentional drive of his actions. And the inevitable undoing of his work.

 

     Nero burns and flashes up as he thinks of Angelo. He ruined Avilio, and killed his family. He wants to tear down the apartment building and consume it in his rage, knowing he could take Angelo down with him if he could.

 

     But he can’t.

 

_He should have killed me._

 

     Angelo can feel Nero smoldering, at least, he thinks he can. He used to be good at reading the man, but now he relied way too much on instinct. He lets Nero smolder, and hopes to God that He delivers him a gift of Nero choking on his meal.

 

* * *

 

 

     His blood feels warm against his searing skin, burning from being punctured by his nails. Angelo gasps, sucking in the pain and exhaling relief. It’s not enough to kill him, but it satisfies him. He rests against the bathroom sink, sinking and melting in the sticky red.

 

     Angelo takes another deep breath, a hint of iron in his mouth. It sticks to his tongue like sugar, and hits a sweet spot in him.

 

 _Funny,_ He thinks to himself. _Fango would get off on this._

 

     It’s strange to think of Fango, now. How long ago had he died? A couple months?

 

     “What month is it…”

 

     If he can remember the exact date Fango passed, he’ll remember Corteo ‘running away’, and their grand escape, and ultimately he’ll remember.

 

     He doesn’t want to remember.

 

     “What the hell?”

 

     Angelo reacted too late to the creaking of the door. He hadn’t thought of locking it. Blood pulsed through him and dribbled out, and the sting of the pain distracted him way too much.

 

     “Get up.”

 

     Angelo ignores him. He scratches the wounds absentmindedly.

 

     “ _Get up_.”

 

     “No.”

 

     “God damn it, Avilio, get the hell up,” Nero’s voice shakes and for a second, Angelo stops. He’s not Avilio. He never was.

 

     Nero pulls him up and pushes him onto the toilet after setting the lid over the rim. He mutters to himself, shaking his head, but all Angelo hears is the metallic sliding of the cupboard and the rustling of contents and Nero’s curses.

 

     “You goddamn fool,” Nero grabs hold of his arm and proceeds to apply medicine to it.

 

     Angelo hisses and pulls away. “Let go.”

 

     Nero grabs his arm and tightens his grip, keeping him there as he continued. “Stop it,” Angelo demands, but Nero continues.

 

     “Nero, I said let go.”

 

     Angelo gritted and grinded his teeth at the application of bandages on his injuries.

 

     “Damn it, Nero, I said--”

 

     “I _can’t._ ”

 

     For how strong his voice carries into the bathroom, Nero can’t stop shaking, nor the tears in his eyes.

 

     It _hurts._ It hurts Nero a hell of a lot more than it does Angelo. How can Angelo hurt himself like this? He wouldn’t do this around Corteo, and it burns him to know. But what hurts the most is that seeing Angelo in pain still upsets him. He damns his watery eyes for weeping so openly for a man that destroyed his life. He curses the man he is for welcoming him in so easily, and for giving this man his heart.

 

     How broken had he been to fall so deeply? To fall so quickly? Why couldn’t he catch a break? He weeps and swallows his sobs, and thanks God that Angelo will never get the satisfcation of seeing these tears fall.

 

     Nero helps him out of the bathroom and back onto his bed. It’s three in the morning, and neither of them had any right to be up so late. Just as Nero draped the blanket over Angelo, he felt the younger grab at his wrist.

 

     “I hate you,” Angelo whispers, his voice quivering with honesty. He doesn’t have to look at him in order to convery his quiet outrage. “I hate you so much.”

 

     Nero says nothing for a while. He tears his hand away and makes his way out of the bedroom. “Then kill me.”

 

* * *

 

 

     Avilio was a beautiful man.

 

     Where Nero crumpled and ended, Avilio began and rose. Sex with the man was always exciting, to Nero. For a man who had previously spent his time oggling at women, Nero gave just as much attention to Avilio in these intimate moments.

 

     He had always been watching him, discreetly. Back at the Island to where he was now, staring up at him with honeyed vacancy. Nero never knew what Avilio was thinking about, but his eyes dripped with feelings when the moments became too hard to contain, and it excited him.

 

     He arched his back so smoothly, and his drawn out cry went down so sweetly, that Nero has to swallow hard before going back for more kisses.

 

     “Avilio,” He breathed, and God, even now Nero can remember how lovely the ache in his chest felt like when Avilio acknowledged him and kissed him. “Oh God, Avilio…”

  
  
     Avilio never uttered his name, only breathed and unraveled and keened. He pulled him closer, tightening around Nero and driving him over the edge.

 

     Their hot breaths and shallow breathing mingle together, Nero’s laugh ragged as he sweetly kissed Avilio after each gasp of air.

 

     He came inside him, like all the times before. Avilio never complained, and Nero always thought he liked the feeling of being filled. It was one of the things Nero did to complete him, but it was one of the stupider practices, now that he thought about it.

 

     They laid in Nero’s bed, Nero reaching for a cig and lighting it up. He inhaled the fumes, took in the time with it, and let it plume into something grand and distant, before subtly dispersing and filling the room.

 

     Avilio was always never quite there after sex, his eyes distant and dull, and it was during these moments that Nero wondered if he had missed something. He brushes the bangs off Avilio’s face with his knuckles, taking care not to drag unless he went to cup his cheek.

 

     Avilio responded, his eyes darting to Nero. He met him with a flash of hot anger that hardened his eyes to amber, before melting into dull indifference.

 

     Nero bites back the hurt with a smug smile, cupping his cheek. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be more vocal, you know.”

 

     “Why should I?”

 

     “It tells me I’m doing a good job.”

 

     Avilio frowned, scrunching up his face in a quick act of childishness. He kissed Nero, shutting him up for the night.

 

* * *

 

 

     It doesn’t quite settle in what led to this. It was hard to think about what he could have done wrong in such a short amount of time because there were so many answers to that. It could just be a culmination of everything Angelo has fucked over. He wouldn’t know unless Nero told him.

 

     He wouldn’t truly know if he couldn’t make out his face.

 

     Angelo can slip out a gasp of air that escapes his lips when he tries to form a question. His hands instinctively grab at Nero’s bigger hands that are tight on his neck. His fingernails lightly graze Nero’s knuckles, and another breath escapes him and hitches his weak gasp.

 

     He licks at his dry lips, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, feeling his eyelids close. He clings to Nero’s grip, hoping to keep him there. _Just like that,_ he thinks and remembers how Nero would purr in bed. _You’re so good, Avilio, so fucking good._

 

     Angelo had always forgotten, but since the fall, Nero’s right hand never worked right. It functioned, but some of the cogs weren’t there. He only remembered it now from the way Nero seemed to fight so hard to keep his fingers there, in this right spot.

 

     He pressed his palms against Nero’s hands, guiding him, urging him, trembling as he pushed him to wring his neck.

 

_Just like this, Nero._

 

     Nero could practically hear Angelo in his head. He jabbed his thumbs into his throat, trembling as he felt blood pulse.

 

 _Yes, just like that, Nero._ He heard Angelo say. His nails dug into skin and pierced, and Angelo let out a sigh of relief.

 

_Don’t stop._

 

     His right hand is awkward and clumsy, and the wires inside don’t work right. It trembles and shivers and can’t truly grip things as tight as he wants.

 

_Please,_

 

     The hand that dragged along Angelo’s cheek and pressed him close to his chest was damaged. He wouldn’t be able to truly hold onto Angelo with his fucked up hand.

 

_Kill me._

 

     But Nero tightens and tightens his grip, squeezes until his knuckles go white but it’s not enough.

 

     And yet, Angelo is drifting away from him. He’s letting go one last breath, the one thing keeping him here with Nero. He pictures Angelo, seven years back, with a balloon. At some point, he lets go and it drifts up, and up, and up, and up, and…

 

     Angelo fell to the floor, wide-eyed and shocked. He clutches his throat, his fingers tracing the bruises and gasps. He takes in air now, rather then letting it leave him. He’s alive.

 

 _“Why?”_ Angelo chokes out, and he’s not Avilio, or Angelo, but is a child. He struggles to breathe and speak and swallow, and tears sting his eyes and he’s struck with the need to cry.

 

_“Why won’t you let me die?”_

 

     Is this the true depth of Nero’s hatred? He finally experiences peace since Corteo escaped, finally saw his family, only to be pulled back into this hell with Nero?

 

     He knew God had it out for him, but to keep him stranded like this? With the man he knew had no right to be ruined like this? How much longer until he’d have peace?

 

     “Kill me, god damn it!” Angelo screches, slamming his fist onto the carpet and hating how unsatisfactory the impact is.

 

 _“_ I destroyed your life, why won’t you _kill me,_ Nero?! _”_

 

     “I _can’t,_ ” Nero whispers, and his voice breaks again.

 

     He falls to the floor, shaking his head and struggling not to cry for the hundredth time since they’ve lived together.

 

     Nero’s broken. Angelo tends to forget this despite knowing he had lost so much of himself. There’s nothing to gain from losing another piece of himself. He’s already rotten.

 

     He pulls Angelo close to him, holds him close, traps him in his embrace and trembles. Angelo isn’t Fio, and he isn’t Vanno, and he just won’t let him touch him without fighting against him.

 

     He liked it a lot better when Angelo pretended to care.

 

     “After all these years, I still can’t do it…”

 

     Angelo thrashes and pounds his fists into Nero, cursing him for the thousandth time since they ran away to Chicago.

 

     “ _You haven’t changed at all_.”

 

     Angelo bites and Nero only tightens his grip on him, and Angelo feels Nero’s damned hand shake and stiffen as he tries to cling to the back of Angelo’s shirt.

 

     “I haven’t,” Nero whispers. “I haven’t."

 

* * *

 

     Nero grips the scissors tightly, and he snips with caution and he cuts slower than molasses. Angelo thinks Nero doesn’t fit being anything but fast, but if he were to have said that when they would bed each other, Nero would take great offense.

 

     He truly regrets not saying that.

 

     Nero focuses on trimming Angelo’s hair, worried he might be snipping too close to his ears. He doubts Angelo would be upset, but he wouldn’t forgive himself for harming the man. Not while Angelo was off in his own world, and not when he was expecting it.

 

     Angelo wears a quiet expression, his mouth set in a simple line, and lacks the usual scowl that dragged his face. _Off in his own world, then._

 

-

 

     The younger man’s eyes flicker and twitch with each snip of the scissors, but he drifts back to anywhere else.

 

     Anywhere else becomes the Vanetti Playhouse, and the Vanetti Playhouse becomes Avilio staring down Nero and ignoring the corpses that lay just a couple feet away. He remembers Nero’s youthful face that contorted into raw hurt and a hatred that consumed his expression and set his mouth to question. Tears fell down his face, and Avilio remembered the nose of Nero’s gun on his cheek as he was accused for killing Vanno three months before this time.

 

     He imagined Nero lost that youthful grin after that, seeing how he felt the way his lips dragged after each tired word he pushed out now.

 

     Angelo closes his eyes, the scissors metallic clatter distant to the resounding echo of a shot. It all happened in stop-motion, really. While other memories grew foggy and dark along with his vision, he will never forget that playhouse.

 

-

 

_Nero had lost his gun in the bout. I aimed as he grabbed it, pulled the trigger just as he got up. He staggered back, clutching his elbow. He stared at me in shock and I felt empty. Nero fell back onto the wooden bars but toppled over it. Emptiness became full of anxiety, and fear._

 

_No. No. No._

 

_I reached for him._

 

_No._

 

_I grabbed onto him._

 

_Not like this._

 

_“Nero,” My voice was drowned out, but I clung to him._

 

_I'd rather die with him, then to die alone._

 

_I looked up at him, teriffied. Nero never looked as horiffied as he did then._

 

_Nero. Nero. Nero._

 

_Black._

 

-

 

     Angelo is pulled back, but it’s not anything different. No new scenery for him, just different sensations. No hard floor, or damp blood that he never knew was his or Nero’s, being left in the dark since then. The dark was company, but he didn’t want it. Like how Nero was company, but he didn’t want that, either.

 

     Like how the mafia was Nero’s, but he hadn’t wanted that.

 

     But that’s not what pulled him back to the chair and Nero’s careful, clumsy, shaking hand snipping at his hair. It’s the absence of the metallic, fibrous sound of the scissors cutting, and the lack of metal on his ear, on his neck. Avilio comes back to question Nero’s motives, that part of Angelo hitting him with doubts.

 

_He could kill you._

 

_Good._

 

     Nero had put it away to turn Angelo’s chair to see him. He doesn’t see his expression, but from the hot, wet tears spilling down his face, Angelo had an idea as to what face he was making at the sight of Angelo crying.

 

_Satisfaction._

 

     “Don’t look at me,” He whispers.

 

     Angelo pushes and presses his back against the chair, suddenly eleven years old in Lawless and suddenly nowhere. Knowing who he was and suddenly without that identity. Suddenly Avilio and suddenly broken Angelo Lagusa.

 

     Nero’s fucked up hand cups - attempts to cup - his cheek, brushing some of his tears with a thumb that clinked and hesitated like a machine. But unlike a machine, he doesn’t work and can’t be repaired.

 

     “I hate you,” Avilio and Angelo whisper, and whisper, and whisper.

 

     “I know,” Nero murmurs, his voice quiet and soothing. He hates him.

 

     Nero still loves him, and it only tears Angelo down more. He’d almost killed Avilio with that sweetness, and he just might actually do it to Angelo.

 

     The thought scared him to death.

 

* * *

 

 

     Angelo wakes up after having lived years that God could have given to Luce, and time that Testa and Elena would have used wisely.

 

     Angelo wakes up after living eighty years, which was a lot longer than someone like him deserved.

 

     Angelo wakes up after living longer than Nero, and spending his entire life in that apartment he had left years ago. The landlady had passed, along with everything else he remembered, and he’s back in the room with empty bottles and stolen wallets. The room with regrets and self-loathing all over their walls.

 

     He dies in that room and sees his mother, his father, Luce, Corteo and… it’s not enough. _Where’s Nero?_

 

     “Nero,” Angelo calls out immediately after waking, his voice hoarse and ragged and fear prickles him when he thinks he sounds older than he should be.

 

     “Nero.”

 

     No answer. Angelo feels small and he shudders.

 

     He remembers tiptoeing through his house as a child, Luce clinging to the end of his shirt as they searched for their parents.

 

     Angelo is clumsier than his younger self, much slower, too. He clutches to the walls for support, gripping as tight as Luce had long ago.

 

 _Papa’s okay,_ he’d reassured Luce as they traversed the halls. _He just works long hours, sometimes._

 

     Angelo follows the room’s structure to the door and clings to the wall a while longer before taking bold steps into the darkness for the couch.

 

_Nero’s alive._

 

     “Nero,” He trembles like a child, and Angelo is no longer sure how old he is, at this point. “Nero, wake up.” He grabs onto the arm of the couch with a hand and feels around for Nero with the other. His slow, careful hand grows frantic as he feels nothing.

 

     Angelo crumples onto the floor and buries his face into the cushion, struggling not to scream. _Where’s Nero, where’s Nero, where’s Nero?_

 

     He chokes on a sob when he feels someone touch his shoulder.

 

     Nero’s weak hand feels so strong in this moment, and Angelo shudders out a sigh.

 

     “What are you doing crying over a couch?”

 

     Nero sounds like he did a year ago, and it only confuses Angelo more. _What year is it?_

 

     The sleepiness drapes over Nero’s exhaustion and sweetens his words to the way he spoke in bed. Angelo wants to melt in his words and taste them on his lips. Eighty years in a single night made him go mad.

 

     “You left me,” Angelo accuses, grabbing a fistful of Nero’s wife beater, pulling him down until he was to his level.

 

     “I just went to take a piss,” Nero reassures, but his words are slow and he sounds suspicious of him.

 

     Angelo shook his head.

 

     “No?” Nero tore Angelo’s hands away from his tank. “You saying I didn’t?”

 

     At the silence, Nero shakes his head and helps Angelo up. “Getting so worked up over nightmares,” Nero scoffed, his voice sliding into fondness for the first time in a long while. “How old are you, again?”

 

     “Do you know?”

 

     “Do you not remember?”

 

     Angelo had missed Nero. Avilio was made to hate him, but did Angelo truly hate him?

 

     He answers neither question.

 

     “You’re twenty,” Nero brought him back to the room, helping him back into bed. “I’m twenty-two, now.” He speaks softly, but his voice fills the room and his thoughts and Angelo goes tipsy on the Italian lilt that slipped and spilled into his words.

 

     Angelo reaches for him again. “You’re sleeping here,” He demands, but his voice is much too weak and pleading for it to be a threat. Yet it stops Nero in his tracks. He searches Angelo’s face, lingering on golden eyes that burst with life despite the tint of dullness. He can’t help but ask.

 

     “Finally killing me, tonight?”

 

     Silence.

 

     “I could do it.”

 

     Nero smiles, and Angelo feels him press that smile onto his cheek.

 

     “You could,” He agrees, and Angelo thinks he’s back.

 

     Nero kisses his forehead and jawline, and pauses as he lingers near his lips. He hesitates.

 

     “But you won’t.”

 

     He says it so confidently and kisses him so strongly that Angelo almost believes Nero is back.

 

     But he’ll never truly come back, and he knows he’ll never truly come back to being Angelo.

 

     Angelo kisses back, anyway.

 

* * *

 

     Sometimes, Angelo struggles to recall the time as it passes. He can’t say with absolute certainty what month it was, or the day, but he had never paid attention to that when he had sight.

 

     But Nero, he recalls, hasn’t touched him like this in two years.

 

     Rough, impatient hands have aged into slow, careful hands. His masterful hands have degraded into that of an amateur’s.

 

     But it’s this awkward, incomplete Nero that steals his attention and makes his heart race.

 

     Avilio is alive and rushing through his veins as he kisses Nero. _You broke him like this,_ he says, and Angelo kisses Nero harder, taking his lower lip between his teeth and pulling at him slightly. _We did this._

 

     “Angelo..”

 

     He can’t see, but he can remember the face Nero made in the past, and the contrast is something Angelo revels in way too much.

 

     “Just like that, Nero..”

 

     Nero still bruises his hips, but the pain is appreciated, and Angelo’s sure Nero will look back on them later and admire his work.

 

     “Nero,” He coos, and Nero shivers. Angelo smiles and loops his arms around his shoulder, intertwining behind his neck.

 

     “You treat me so well,” He whispers before asking for a kiss.

 

     Nero swallowed, cursing himself for falling into Angelo again and again, kissing him again and again.

 

-

 

     Angelo’s fingertips trail up Nero’s body, marvelling his build and flashing back to images of what he used to be, though those memories were growing faded by the days.

 

     He had gained a bit of weight since last time, and as he cupped Nero’s muffin top, Angelo decided he didn’t quite mind.

 

     “Stop messing around,” Nero swats Angelo’s hand away, laughing a bit. The quality of his voice is ragged from the sex, exhausted from how long it had been.

 

     Angelo says nothing as Nero scolds him, reaching up to tease his beard, scratching it fondly.

 

     “Shave it off.”

 

     “You don’t like my beard?”

 

     “You’re recognizable with it.”

  
  
     Silence.

 

     “This is why I need you around, Angelo.” Nero smiles, kissing him sweetly.

 

* * *

 

 

     Angelo runs fingers down Nero’s face, stopping at his bare chin which is smooth and well shaven. He reaches for the fedora which Nero hands to him. He places it on his head after smoothing up his hair. He’s not sure what he looks like, but he’s sure Nero won’t bother fixing his attempts at assisting him.

 

     He cups his cheeks, noticing the creases made by his smile. It wasn’t just smile lines, though. Nero had aged in the past two years wearing lines and bags he shouldn’t have at twenty-three.

 

     Had Nero always been so tired? Angelo smiles, knowing there’s still something inside that gets off on Nero’s misery. He kisses Nero sweetly, lingering by his lips, tasting the earlier ashes of Nero’s first morning cigar in ages.

 

     “The world’s going to shit,” Angelo mumbles, his lips brushing against skin and cheek.

 

     “It always has been,” Nero hums, kissing Angelo’s cheek. “We’ll just have to leave when it starts affecting us.”

 

     “When it affects us.”

 

     “Because we’re family.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Angelo and Nero have survived the other's attempts at murder and have escaped to Chicago, both of them coming out of the rubble with nothing they came in with-in Nero's case, his family and title to the Galassias, but in Angelo's case, his eyesight and his facade. Now dependent on the only man he's living for, and the one man he hates above anyone else, Angelo has more losses to add to his growing list of Nero's wrongs, with the only option of ending the list being lost with his sight. But perhaps a chance of some sense of redemption isn't lost to them, and can be found in their company.


End file.
